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Forum:In Regard to Crossover Fanfiction
All right, so this is going to be a little lengthy, as it's meant to address a major community issue and suggest a possible solution to it. It mainly deals with problems of user retention and address this inactive hulk. So, I'll just come right out and say it, this is about lifting the wiki's strict ban on crossover fanfiction, along with crossovers to the "real world." Allow me to explain. Crossover fanfiction is fairly popular among fans of any medium. I myself have written crossovers of other franchises before. Plus, it allows people to mix two things they love. Crossovers with the real world (and, to a lesser extend, self-inserts) give people the ability to enter writing in other mediums while still sticking to things they find familiar by blending the fantastic and the mundane. And let's face it, Bionicle loves interdimensional shenanigans. Crossovers are practically inevitable. Also, the ban on having human characters is kind of ridiculous. Many fantasy settings have humans, and strictly banning them seems a little harsh in terms of dealing with certain groups of fans. Now, I'll be the first to admit that not all crossover fanfiction is good, and self-inserts are notorious for being awful, but, as with any medium, Sturgeon's Law applies, and by trying to prevent the bad that crossover fiction brings, we're keeping a lot of good stuff from making its way to the sight as well. Brutaka's Game is an excellent example of real world crossover and possibly a bit of self-insert executed fairly well. Also, the Bionicle Crossovers Wiki has proven to be a failed experiment. It's last edit occurred in June of last year. The lack of a viable userbase has caused it to suffer. No one will post there because no one will see what they post, and no one will go there because no one posts anything, creating an endless loop of locking people out. Directing people there is ultimately harmful to our own site, since it is pretty much sentencing prospective users to a veritable wasteland. They'll just leave the wikia community and go to other sites or forums, and we don't want that. User-retention and a friendly community should be a priority. So, in order to garner more users and allow a wider variety of fiction to be published on the site, I propose lifting the ban on crossover fanfiction on the wiki, along with a set of qualifiers. Consider it a "bill of rights" to ensure quality: #All crossover fanfictions must make sense. No nonsensical crossovers where characters are illogically thrown into other situations. This should also be used for the presence of humans in a story. Having humans in the story without a logical reason for them to be there should not be tolerated. #Ban on High School AU's. We don't need that. #Strict judgement on self-inserts, possibly including a Mary Sue/Marty Stu test to prevent them from getting too out of hand. #A voting forum would be established for the community to check crossover fanfics. This would allow us to keep watch on stories and vote out poor ones or make authors improve. This forum would decide all decisions ranging from sensability to levels of "Sue/Stu-ness". #A specific set of crossover templates (page infobox and crossover banner), along with possibly a crossover namespace, titling articles "Crossover/StoryTitleHere" rather than just "Story Title Here" in order to further separate them from usual stories. #A "Featured Crossover" spotlight on the main page, to promote and help foster creativity and quality among crossovers. #To be allowed on this wiki, crossovers should feature at least a 1:1 ratio of Bionicle to other franchise content. Bionicle should be the majority source of content. A story where the Toa Mata meet the Avengers would be acceptable. A story where the Avengers have Tahu as a member is not. Basically, while they'd be heavily regulated, we should finally lift the ban in order to increase user contributions and allow for more creativity on the site. --Echo 1: High Resolution, 07:35, February 11, 2016 (UTC) ADDENDUM: BC and I have already brainstormed up an idea for a template. A normal page banner with this image and this text: "The following is a crossover featuring characters and places from another media. For more information on the non-BIONICLE subjects featured, go here (link to wikia on whatever is in the story)." Voting For #'Protecting Your Unoriginality Since 2010' 17:26, February 11, 2016 (UTC) #Because Bionicle High School Musical never needs to happen. Or Skakdi High. Or anything else of equal hideousness. Excelsior! 21:11, February 11, 2016 (UTC) #Imagine all the Hero Factory/BIONICLE crossovers that are proposed but quickly shot down for the crime of nonsense. - #not like i've already been writing crossovers already or anything Talk | Stories | Bionicle: CCG ' #I'm up for it, but see comment below. and why does my vote show up as a one?[[User:Mercatorprojection|'Toa]] [[User Talk:Mercatorprojection|'Diablex']] 22:37, April 20, 2016 (UTC) # I saw that the "human" page was deleted yesterday. Don't think the rules need to be so strict, and the crossovers wiki is clearly dead. Kneeler (talk | ) 16:54, April 26, 2016 (UTC) Against #Would demand too much regulation for my tastes. Regardless, I can't see there being enough crossovers to justify adding a Featured Crossover on the Main Page. While the idea is nice in theory, I just personally don't care for crossover fictional works. Very rarely have I seen them ending well and they often buckle under the weight of themselves, even when handled by experienced writers. #Bluh. ODST! (talk) 23:43, February 11, 2016 (UTC) #I can't see this helping the overall quality of the wiki, or it's reputation elsewhere. Sturgeon's Law etc. ----Stormfork 13:52, February 12, 2016 (UTC) #This needs to be revised. See SM's thing for reasons. #Actually, nevermind. I really hate crossovers. #—[[User:Rando07|'Rando']][[User talk:RandoMaster07|'07']] 18:07, April 26, 2016 (UTC) #Unless the writer actually tries to help familiarize readers with the characters from other sources I'll be against this. Our medium to this point has been Bionicle. Added more information (especially things references exclusive to that other source of media) that would simply make the target audience for it much more smaller. I understand how it would allow a larger range of creativity, but I never really see it working it out that well for CBW, especially considering how I came across multiple crossovers of a book I read called Warriors. And the amount of crossovers for it I've seen never worked and usually never kept with the story that well. Nor the characters.Hestisimi (talk) 19:59, April 26, 2016 (UTC) #I've never been one for cross-overs, they always seem to convulute worlds. And I wouldn't even call a High School AU a "cross over" in the first place. It doesn't use other sources of media, and like what Hesty has already said. The target audience would become much more smaller in a sense. Especially with all the references that writers tend to want to fit in their stories. Just, in a sense, making the stories lack fluid and true structure. [[User:Jaggedthorn|'A']] [[User talk:Jaggedthorn|'Word']] [[User blog:Jaggedthorn|'Is']] [[Foreboding Excavations|'A']] [[Implosions|'Thousand']] [[Biome of Blood|'Pictures']] 20:03, April 26, 2016 (UTC) Comments Bobdo does have a point though. It's not like there are a lot of them For those of you who don't like to read, most of the important points I noted are in bold. There's also a tl;dr version at the bottom. My opinion towards crossovers is much like that of other users, and thus I can understand the "discrimination" that they face. I feel like crossovers are generally just founded on the "rule of cool" - the idea that it would be "cool" to make a crossover between two different universes - and the result is a story that's written because the concept behind it is cool, without any consideration of the necessary elements of fiction such as theme. Then there's also the fact that writing crossovers is just harder in general, what with having to write within the bounds of two different universes rather than one) and more prone to relying on way-too-convenient plot elements - how does a writer intend to explain (if they even provide an explanation at all) a person being thrown from their universe into a completely different one, other than "they fell through a random tear in the fabric of space-time"? Do I think it's impossible for a "good" crossover fanfiction to be produced? No. That said, I've never seen a crossover fanfiction that I would consider good, and I don't expect to ever see a crossover fanfiction that's I'll consider good. That said, I also support the move to allow crossovers on this wiki, for multiple reasons. While I don't see a lift on the crossover ban at all leading to an increase in the flow of "quality content" on the wiki, I do think that it will open up the wiki to a larger base of users. I think that benefit far outweighs the con of such a move. Really, the only downside I can think of is that this would just lead to more garbage content on the wiki, and let's face it, at least 80% of the content on the wiki is garbage anyway. There's no point in regulating garbage content, because beyond grammar and page size, there's really no way we can dictate the quality of stories and pages. This is a fanfiction wiki - a good portion of the writers here have little to no professional experience, and so it's inevitable that we'll always see crappy, cliched (wow no accent mark what a piece of actual human scum) content on the wiki. Lifting the ban on crossovers, I think, isn't really going to change that for the better or worse. There's also the fact that there really isn't anywhere for BIONICLE crossover writers to post their content in the first place. Yes, I know that the BIONICLE Crossover Wiki exists, but let's face it - it's a dead wiki withdead administration. It wasn't being regulated, it wasn't active, and it wasn't at all a welcoming environment (if it could be referred to an "environment" at all) for any of the users that were referred to it. It was more of an excuse for the administrators (and yes, I'm guilty of this) to get crap content off of the wiki than an actual place where users could put their content. All in all, the rule banning crossovers from the wiki solved no problems, and really it only created the problem of crossover writers having nowhere but an absolutely dead wiki to put their content on. I think this vote solves that problem, and also means we can take one more dead wiki off of the list of wikis we're "affiliated" with. Still, I strongly disagree with part of this proposal. Like I said before, regulating content on this wiki is pretty pointless. I feel like the same applies to crossovers too. Really, applying a whole bunch of restrictions to crossovers isn't going to make crossover fanfiction writers feel any more welcomed. What's the point of letting users write fanfiction on the wiki, but pretty much "only if the staff thinks it doesn't suck"? Leaving the existence of a page up to the discretion of admins on the basis of purely subjective quality really is a rule I see only leading to problems - unlike stub or wikification guidelines, which, while still subject to varying interpretation, are still pretty easy to identify (it's harder to argue that a page is or isn't short, or does or doesn't have bad grammar), this rule relies purely on whether the staff thinks a story is "good" or not. That's just too subjective. Even worse is that you propose that this type of scrutinization apply only to crossovers. While it's true that, as discussed prior, all or most of us have lower expectations of crossovers, we really shouldn't judge a whole category of pages on a completely different basis than others. Doing so is just going to lead to disagreements and disputes; it'll make crossover writers feel more discriminated against than welcomed, and the result is the same issue we face now - crossover writers being forced out of this wiki based solely on preconceptions about the quality of crossovers. If we're going to introduce a rule that crossover stories have to be "this good" to be on the wiki, we might as well do that for stories of all types - and I know that's not going over well. Tl;dr version: I don't like crossovers, but allowing them on the wiki probably won't change the general ratio of crap to not crap content on the wiki - in effect, no real downside, with the upside of allowing a wider variety of writers onto the wiki. That said, I think it's unfair and pointless to judge whether or not crossovers can be on the wiki based on the staff's interpretation of their quality. also we should have high school AUs ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Shadowmaster 03:02, February 12, 2016 (UTC) Well. Adding on to SM's comment(s), many of these proposals (specifically article 1, 2, 3 and 4) can, in fact, be applied to all works of fiction in general. Doesn't a bionicle story "have to make sense"? In fact, don't all works "have to make sense"? Going further, there should be no reason why, to use the given example, a human is there. It is a crossover, that is, a blend of two normally unrelated databases into one on the whim of the writer. As for article 2, are you saying we can't have high school settings in a story that involves bionicle + some other entity? Are we allowed to have a school setting in a fiction solely based on bionicle? Why would you allow "ordinary", so to speak, stories to have a high school scene but not crossovers? You may argue here that school itself is part of the real world, that the education system is created by humans and therefore is a crossover. Yet, there is education already existing in the bionicle and it is common knowledge. I can see why this point was written, after all, it can be disgustingly over-the-top. And admittedly, I am fairly open in regards to content of stories, be it romance, ships, etc. But there should never be a blanket ban on such a specific style of story, especially only for crossovers. Adding yourself, in the case of bionicle, "self-MOCs", is already out of hand in some bionicle stories. Making sure a character is not outright stupid is not our, that is, the wiki community's, job. It is the writer's. it is one thing to tidy up an article, another to change it's content outright. These are not your characters, and no matter how much you think they are bad, you have no right to change it. It is the intellectual property of another human being's. (Another argument can be made if the page is abandoned, but, obviously, that is outside the scope of this discussion.) You can point out their character(s) may need work, and even then, it can be taken the wrong way. There is no point in regulating the "Mary Sue"-ness of a character. If a story is filled with silly characters, it won't be read. Simple as that. Going further on this topic, hypothetically, if we were to start examining characters, why are you proposing strict regulations on only crossovers? Lastly, article 4. This entire section is redundant. Reviews exist for a reason. If you ever want to have your say on a story, leave a review, that simple. Even when you are talking to the author directly, say, on chat, about his or her story, you are already reviewing it. We should not meet up to strike down a story, saying whether it is "allowed" or not, we should be offering bits of information as the story unfolds. A forum for reviews, now, that is a different matter. Yet, as I have said before, this forum should apply to all stories in general. Crossovers should not be given any extra treatment. As for the other three articles, I don't mind them too much. In short, my main concern is crossovers getting so much unncessary regulation when it should be given to all works of fiction, regardless of nature. They should not be "heavily regulated", unless you plan on regulating all stories that way. (And that will certainly not work. You want to regulate stories? Are you willing to beta read day in, day out? I wouldn't think so.) why do i spend time on writing this stuff Talk | Stories | Bionicle: CCG ' First off, your logo be messing me up, Bub. Second, I think these rules are too strict. Considering the staff's, as well as most of the wiki's, bias on crossovers, they have less chance of succeding. More often than not, staff members will strike down these crossovers. If we are to lift the ban on crossovers, then we must loosen the rules, because you aren't giving crossovers a fighting chance. -[[User:Pitcat|'Ad]] [[User Talk:Pitcat|'Victoriam!']] ps, why the ban on high school AU's? We absolutely need the Toa Mata in high school situations! We can make Teridax the bully/mean teacher! (/s) Okay, okay, so here’s my view. If a proposal like this is going to be passed, an extensive edit needs to be made, first. Let’s look at it like this: there is no, true way a crossover can actually make “sense”. You can explain all the science behind it, but it’s not possible. And let’s not forget, sometimes the entire point of the crossover is that it, well, doesn’t make sense, and when we put restrictions on that, bad things happen. Just think, with this restriction up, Stumpy can’t ever, ever, ever have a story! Also, on the case of poor quality and quality checks, there should already be a place from that for ANY story. We shouldn’t be discrimination on a story based simply on the fact that it’s a crossover; rather, we should be helping all writers improve. Given that said, I propose that another forum of sorts is created, that we could call the Prophecy Review. Then, from there, we could have subsection for crossovers and normal fiction. This could clear up the confusion. Face it guys, there is nothing wrong with crossovers. I’ll admit, I don’t like it when they, well, don’t make any sense whatsoever, but having all these restriction like this can scare away potential champion writers. We don’t want that, do we?[[User:Mercatorprojection|'Toa']] [[User Talk:Mercatorprojection|'Diablex']] 22:35, April 20, 2016 (UTC) Real-world content Forget crossovers for a second. I'm just surprised that the "humans" page was deleted under the current rule. Don't see the issue with using real-world elements in stories. I know there's self-inserts on here for sure. Kneeler (talk | ) 20:05, April 26, 2016 (UTC) The only problem with that is that humans on a Bionicle wiki qualifies as a crossover. I think generally the problem with allowing crossovers is that it has content unrelated to the subject of the wiki. The problem isn't the bad content or whatever, it's the unnecessary addition of another universe into this single-subject wiki. I personally would never have joined the CBW if I saw "Sonic the Hedgehog: Return of Shadow" on what was supposedly a Bionicle site. But really, the question we should be asking ourselves is "Does anybody really want to write a crossover? Does this debate serve any purpose besides the morality of banning a quesitonable type of fanfiction??"